Lynching memorial may be game-changer for Montgomery tourism

This April 28, 2018 photo shows visitors looking at markers bearing the names of lynching victims at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala. The memorial includes some 800 markers, one for each county in the U.S. where lynchings took place, documenting the killings of more than 4,400 individuals between 1877 and 1950. A marker to victims lynched in Laurens County, South Carolina, including a woman, is shown to the right. (AP Photo/Beth J. Harpaz)

This April 28, 2018 photo shows the elaborate gravesite of Hank Williams, the legendary country singer, at the Oakwood Annex Cemetery in Montgomery, Ala. Williams died at the age of 29 while being driven to a concert. Montgomery is also home to a museum about his life. (AP Photo/Beth J. Harpaz)

This April 28, 2018 photo shows Michelle Browder standing in front of the Court Square Fountain in Montgomery, Ala., as she leads a tour. Her company, called More Than Tours, takes visitors through the history of the city, from its past as a center of the slave trade and birthplace of the confederacy, through the civil rights era, to the contemporary resurgence of its downtown. (AP Photo/Beth J. Harpaz)

This April 26, 2018 photo shows visitors looking at markers bearing the names of lynching victims at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala. The memorial includes some 800 markers, one for each county in the U.S. where lynchings took place, documenting the killings of more than 4,400 individuals between 1877 and 1950. (AP Photo/Beth J. Harpaz)

This April 23, 2018, file photo, shows a display at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala., a new memorial to honor thousands of people killed in racist lynchings. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, File)

This April 27, 2018 photo shows a plate of catfish, potato salad and okra served at the Farmers Market Cafe in Montgomery, Ala. The city is expecting an increase in visitors following the opening of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which is a memorial to lynching victims, and a related museum. Visitors will find a variety of hearty Southern fare to sustain their sightseeing, with good, unpretentious meals at places like Davis Cafe and Derk's Filet & Vine in addition to the Farmers Market Cafe. (AP Photo/Beth J. Harpaz)

This April 28, 2018 photo shows a marker at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala., showcasing some of the U.S. states outside the South where racial terror lynchings took place. The new memorial documents more than 4,400 killings that took place between 1877 and 1950. While most of these lynchings took place in the South and in states bordering the South, lynchings in other parts of the country are documented as well. (AP Photo/Beth J. Harpaz)

This April 27, 2018 photo shows a sign on a street in Montgomery, Ala., marking the site where Rosa Parks was arrested in 1955 after refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger. The building behind the sign, which is part of Troy University, houses a museum about Parks' arrest and the ensuing bus boycott by the black community. The protest resulted in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional. (AP Photo/Beth J. Harpaz)

This April 28, 2018 photo shows the elaborate gravesite of Hank Williams, the legendary country singer, at the Oakwood Annex Cemetery in Montgomery, Ala. Williams died at the age of 29 while being driven to a concert. Montgomery is also home to a museum about his life. (AP Photo/Beth J. Harpaz)

In this April 27, 2018 photo, a tour group gathers in Montgomery, Ala., on the street where Martin Luther King, Jr. lived from 1954-1960 while serving as minister of the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church. During that time, King led the Montgomery bus boycott that was sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks. That protest resulted in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional. (AP Photo/Beth J. Harpaz)

This undated photo provided by the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum in Montgomery, Ala., shows a living room in an apartment upstairs from the museum. The apartment and museum are located in a 1910 house that the Fitzgeralds lived in in the 1930s. The apartment, a tranquil space with vintage charm, can be rented on Airbnb and is also used for writers' residencies. (Jonathon Kohn/F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum via AP)

This April 28, 2018 photo shows the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum in Montgomery, Ala. Zelda was a Montgomery native and the couple met in 1918 at a Montgomery country club while F. Scott was stationed at a U.S. Army base. They lived in the house in 1931 and 1932. An upstairs apartment may be rented on Airbnb and is also used for writers' residencies. F. Scott Fitzgerald is best known for his novel, "The Great Gatsby," but while living in this house, he worked on "Tender Is The Night," and she worked on her novel, "Save Me The Waltz." (AP Photo/Beth J. Harpaz)

This April 28, 2018 photo shows a copy of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald's transcript from Princeton University, on display at the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum in Montgomery, Ala. Fitzgerald's writing was said to have interfered with his academic work and he dropped out before graduating to join the military during World War I. He and his wife Zelda, a Montgomery native, lived in the house in 1931 and 1932. An upstairs apartment in the house can be rented on Airbnb and is also used for writers' residencies. (AP Photo/Beth J. Harpaz)

This April 28, 2018 photo shows a poem by Toni Morrison inscribed on a wall at the new National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala. The memorial documents more than 4,400 racial terror lynchings that took place between 1877 and 1950, but the grounds of the 6-acre site also include sculptures and places for reflection. The poem ends with the words, "Love your heart, for this is the prize." (AP Photo/Beth J. Harpaz)

This April 28, 2018 photo shows the Freedom Rides Museum in Montgomery, Ala. On the site in 1961, a white mob attacked a group of black and white students who were traveling together on Greyhound buses to challenge segregation in transportation facilities. The failure of local law enforcement to protect the group led President John F. Kennedy to send in federal marshals. (AP Photo/Beth J. Harpaz)

MONTGOMERY, Alabama — A memorial to the victims of racial lynchings and a new museum in Montgomery, Alabama, have gotten a lot of attention since opening in late April.

Some 10,000 people visited the memorial and museum in the first week. Tourism officials estimate they could attract 100,000 more visitors to this Southern city in the next year. One young man, Dimitri Digbeu Jr., who drove 13 hours from Baltimore to see the memorial, said he thought it had singlehandedly "rebranded" Montgomery.

But tourism challenges exist. Few direct flights serve Montgomery, and it's a three-hour drive from Atlanta.

"How do we get people to come here and make the pilgrimage here?" said filmmaker Ava DuVernay at a conference marking the memorial launch. "We have to be evangelists to go out and say what you saw here and what you experienced here. ... Don't just leave feeling, 'That was amazing. I cried.'"

DuVernay, whose Oscar-nominated movie "Selma" described the 1965 civil rights march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, noted that the memorial and museum were built by legal advocacy group the Equal Justice Initiative . "These people are lawyers fighting for people on death row," DuVernay added. "They're not thinking about how to market this to the wider world."

Some travelers say the new memorial and museum have changed their minds about visiting the Deep South. "As a black American, I'm not crazy about the idea of driving down streets named after Confederate generals and averting my eyes from Confederate flags," said New Yorker Brian Major. "But reconciliation and peace-making has to begin somewhere and for a project as worthy and important as the lynching memorial, I would be willing to make the trip."

DuVernay put it this way: "This has to be a place where every American who believes in justice and dignity must come."

For those who do visit, here's a guide.

LYNCHING MEMORIAL AND LEGACY MUSEUM

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice honors more than 4,000 individuals who were lynched between 1877 and 1950. Their names are inscribed on 800 steel columns, one for every U.S. county where lynchings happened. Most counties are in the South, but there are also markers for lynchings in states like Minnesota and New York.

The markers begin at eye level, then gradually move overhead, evoking the specter of hanging bodies. Some of the killings are described in detail: Victims were lynched for asking for a glass of water, for voting, for testifying against a white man.

The new museum, which is called The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, explores slavery and segregation in horrific detail and argues that when segregation ended, mass incarceration began. The museum cites statistics showing 300,000 people were in prison in 1971 compared with 2.3 million today, and that one in three black boys will be jailed in the 21st century if trends continue. Exhibits offer details of innocent men on death row and children imprisoned in adult facilities where they were brutalized.

Montgomery resident Shawna Brannon volunteered at the opening and said visitors of all races wept and shook their heads in dismay. "Once you go through, you will never be the same," she said.

SLAVERY AND CIVIL RIGHTS

The Legacy Museum is located on the site of a warehouse where thousands of enslaved people were held before being sold at auction nearby. When the Civil War began, Montgomery was the Confederacy's first capitol.

Montgomery's Rosa Parks Museum marks the spot where a black seamstress was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat on a bus to a white passenger. That sparked a bus boycott by African-Americans that ended when the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregation on public buses unconstitutional.

The bus boycott also turned a young minister named Martin Luther King Jr. into a leader of the civil rights movement. That story is told at Montgomery's Dexter Parsonage Museum , where King and his family lived when he was pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. The parsonage porch still bears a crevice where a bomb landed (no one was hurt). Outside the Kings' bedroom is a telephone that rang all night with threatening phone calls.

The Freedom Rides Museum honors black and white students who rode Greyhound buses together to challenge segregation. A white mob attacked them when they arrived in Montgomery while police did nothing. That spurred the Kennedy Administration to send in federal marshals.

Michelle Browder's More Than Tours offers a wonderful bus tour that tells many of these stories and also shows off Montgomery's resurgent downtown, including the restored Kress Building, now home to an art gallery and cafe.

Fans of country music legend Hank Williams should visit his impressive gravesite at Montgomery's Oakwood Annex Cemetery. Downtown, the Hank Williams Museum displays the Cadillac he was riding in when he died at age 29.

Montgomery's Old Cloverdale neighborhood is home to the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum. The "Great Gatsby" writer and his wife lived here in the 1930s, and you can even rent an Airbnb apartment upstairs, complete with record player and jazz albums.